I'd like to add a word about a different part of Bradbury's legacy.  This is Bradbury's activity in the city he loved, which may be less familiar to his readers.  I grew up in the Los Angeles area,  and Bradbury was literally a constant, peripatetic presence throughout the 1970s.

I don't think a week passed when he wasn't interviewed on local television news, but not as a writer--for his views on the community, the emergence and future of Los Angeles, the directions that the city should take if it were to realize its potential.  (For instance, I recall a one-week series of interviews touting the model of Westwood, the urban area full of theater, film, museums and many small, artistic businesses surrounding the UCLA campus--whicih has sadly become a site of multiplexes and congestion that I'm sure dismayed him.)  This was also a time when LA was taking a definite shift away from its vestigal political conservatism--including the election of its first African-American mayor in 1973.  Bradbury's constant iteration of the coming inevitable changes  were part of the important, mainstream cultural background supporting this evolution in perspectives of LA among its citizens.

He was also unavoidable in local literary activities--for instance, I recall him speaking at the LA chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars.  I should emphasize that in such appearances, the time expanded vastly outweighed the attendant sales (these were not book signings) and while his activities certainly maintained his public profile, it was more to promote his views than simply to promote his name.  He was using his reputation as a writer, to enunciate views on the city and its future, not the other way around.

Brian Taves
Library of Congress
(Disclaimer--All opinions expressed are my own and do not reflect any official views.)